A huge amount of new content is added, like Cyclic Dungeon Generation (although still in progress). This release reflects 1.5 half year of development. Mostly I have creating content for HD version of the game during this period, but now I have reached a point when both versions can progress at once. I will try to maintain a more or less normal pace and release a new version every 1-1.5 month.

NEW: Ranged trigger, Hit the road; after player is hit, it can jump 2 squares away

NEW: Triggers are affected by player speed. Hasted player will have double time to react to trigger, slowed player half.

NEW: Player Arcana: Web

NEW: Player Arcana: Haste

NEW: Player Arcana: Frostbolt

NEW: Critical Miss for all paths added

NEW: Player Ranged Shot: Sure Hand

NEW: Player Ranged Shot: Vampiric arrow

NEW: Player Ranged Shot: Elemental shot

NEW: Player Ranged Shot: Eagle shot

NEW: 9 new levels of Volley

NEW: Player Melee Tactic: Bleed

NEW: Player Melee Tactic: Multi Strike

NEW: Player's memory about surrounding is carried to levels. Descending to new level, player will remember dunegon layout, and moving back to previous level will show level state as it was before he went to new level.

Intro

To generate procedural caves and caverns, there are not so many algorithms out there that a programmer can use in his wide array of tools. Most developers use a cellular automata to generate complete cavelike levels, which is relatively nice algorithm that outputs decent layouts. The second method is the random walk method, a fairly simple algorithm that is very quick to implement, although the output does not look nearly as good as output from CA. We will touch two different types random walk types here. Let me say few word on both of the algorithms first, before we move onto Contour Bombing Cave Generation Algorithmï¿½specifically developed for Dungeons of Everchange.

Cellular automata

What is Cellular Automata? Simply, cellular automata is mathematical model, where grid is randomly filled with cells, then based on predefined rules, cells fight with each other, dying or mutating to neighbor cells.Â A complete separate article could be written about cellular automata, there are much more details at the RogueBasin.

For a visual display of the algorithm itself here is a small presentation:

RANDOM walk algorithm

For version Alpha 10

It's been a month since the last post. We worked hard on HD version (and less on ASCII version).

Most of the time went into finishing a game UI for a DoE HD. Inventory, equipment, resistances and skills has been finalized. Animations of enemies are improved, and message window is colored properly. Numerous bugs were fixed, ans speed of the game was doubled.

Here are player skills, and colored window which is located at the bottom of the screen:

Here is inventory showing quantities of items and key shortcuts:

And one more enemy got finished: a Floating Eye. Here is how it looks:

Finally, I have started and implemented into DoE a procedural geometry!

SO What is procedural geometry?

Until now game was only randomized floor during generation and with small randomization on certain elements. That was until one week ago. Now, walls are also randomized, their geometry randomized, and generated before each level. Since game is 3D, 3D objects are used for walls, and all those walls are created by game algorithm. For now the geometry is only simply randomized, but I have some few nasty ideas how that will be even more nice feature. As I am aware of, there is no single game that generates 3D geometry of dungeon on the fly.

There were some broken experiments also, while I was implementing a 3DPG (3D procedural geometry, let me be the father of the name ^ _ ^ ).

Like this one:

Even failed experiments like this, brought a nice touch to walls, and those failed experiments will be introduced as features to the game.

You can head to media section on this site to check results of 3DPG. Algorithm also applies different texture on all walls.

On a first try, even if it worked, a geometry generation took 12-13sec, which was really unacceptable. Waiting between each level just to generate 3D geometry is a sure way for uninstalling the game. After few iteration of optimization, generation of wal